Spinning Government Mandates

It’s truly amazing when the federal government throws you a bone and sets a perfect marketing opportunity right at your feet. Even better, if the regulation that requires compliance by your client’s potential customers spells out the incentives and penalties, you have a diamond in the rough. The challenge is to digest the content that the government provides and spin it into a marketing campaign that makes your client’s product the obvious choice for consumers.

For example, the HITECH Act, signed into law in 2009, requires medical practices to enter the digital world and toss away paper charts by 2016. There are monetary incentives to implement electronic records by a certain time, and then there is a penalty period that cuts Medicaid funding to practices that don’t go that route. The law offers an ideal opportunity for companies that develop this technology, as they can market their solutions to consumers that want to take advantage of the bonus and avoid the penalties.

As David Milberg an entrepreneur notes, fast growing companies must study and fully comprehend federal laws so that they are in compliance with everything.

On the one hand, HITECH identifies certain requisites for qualifying chart software so that consumers don’t “cheat” the system. Medical practices must actually utilize features such as electronic sending of prescriptions to pharmacies, in order to qualify for government bonuses and avoid penalties. Ask many computer rookies about transitioning from any paper notes and records they’ve used for decades and you’ll see a deer in the headlights. Fear about the change holds them back, yet the government requires them to do it.

You can probably see how the marketing plan for developers of technology pretty much falls into place. With our expert PR advice, we strategize with our clients to utilize federal law as content for their blogs and press releases over the newswires. The point is to show consumers the overwhelming advantages of implementing technology sooner rather than later, then emphasize how easy it is to make the transition. The slam dunk is presenting the profitable side of making the move to digital record-keeping: boosts in productivity and efficiency.